Did you know that Tennessee once held a title of
the "World's Tallest Structure" in the Guinness Book of World Records?
I didn't know it and I have lived in the shadow of it my entire life. It's true,
back in 1963 the tallest structure in the world was the WBIR TV-mast located in
Corryton, TN on Zachary ridge. It is still the tallest structure in the state of
Tennessee but it now ranks number 117 tallest in the world. This antenna is
534.01 meters high. For all of you metrically challenged folks that equals 1752
feet and for you football fans that equals just under 5 football field lengths!
I was doing some research and I Googled my hometown of "Corryton, TN."
I was just kinda surfing through the 43,200 matches and stumbled across an
article written by Jack Neely in the Metro
Pulse Newspaper (see entire article posted below) and I found several other
articles that mention this record which I have referenced in some hyperlinks at
the end of this page.

The pictures below are of the actual antenna. The
first one was taken from Washington Pike about a 1/2 mile away. The second
picture was taken from Zacharytown Rd. near the base of the antenna. The FCC has
a locked gate across the entrance of the gravel road that leads up to the
antenna so I could not get closer for pictures. I will try to find someone to
give me permission to cross the gate in order to obtain better pics later
on.

___________________________________________________________

When, briefly, we had the tallest man-made
thing in the world

by Jack
Neely March 1st, 2001 in the Metro
Pulse (article re-printed on this website by permission of author)

There was an error in our Annual Manual, in our second annual
"How Knoxvillian Are You?" quiz. The test was unsigned, but several
readers somehow leapt to the conclusion that I had written that thing. I've
gotten a couple of calls and letters about it, from folks who are even more
Knoxvillian than I am.

The error appeared in question number eight: "What was once, according
to Guinness, the tallest structure in the world?" The "correct"
answer, as indicated, was (b.) "the WBIR television tower."

I should have known better. The tallest structure in the entire world was a
WBIR tower in Knoxville? Come on.

Okay, the tallest structure in the world wasn't in Knoxville. It was about 15
miles east of here, in East Knox County.

I lived in Knoxville in 1963, and was of an age that I would have been awed
to hear that the world's tallest tower was in my home county. But I don't
remember anybody talking about it at recess. It was only a decade later, after
it was no longer the tallest thing in the world, that I first heard of it,
thumbing through my Guinness Book of World Records.

It wasn't a secret here, though. The News-Sentinel announced the
project with a small item on Page 13. Maybe it was just Knoxville modesty, but I
get the impression that people didn't quite know what to make of it.

Other cities, I think, would have crowed about it. It was the time of the New
Frontier. As we struggled to catch up with the Russians in outer-space
exploration, manufacture of H-bombs, and public education, we could console
ourselves that we were thrashing the commies in the size of our TV towers.

Whether the Cold War had anything to do with it, WBIR-TV had practical
reasons to build a monster tower. They were already broadcasting at its maximum
of 316,000 watts, but in the hill country were still tens of thousands who
couldn't receive any of Knoxville's TV signals. In the hollers of Kentucky
alone, there were 50,000 more potential viewers who'd never had access to any
television station. WBIR-TV would reach them with a mast of 1,750 feet tall on a
ridge in northeast Knox County, near House Mountain.

It took some guts. Then not quite seven years old, WBIR was Knoxville's
newest TV station. Much of its news staff, like Doc Johnston, were radio guys
who split their time with the TV studio.

WBIR broadcast a few things those folks in the TV-challenged hollers might
have found interesting enough. There was Cas Walker's early-morning "Farm
and Home Show," which sold country music and groceries, and Rex Rainey's
"The Early Show," the afternoon adventure-movie matinee for the kids.
And several national programs: "Perry Mason," "The Twilight
Zone," Jack Benny, "The Secret Storm," "Captain
Kangaroo." Those Kentuckians had heard of most of those shows; now they
were actually going to see them.

The new mast, to be built by a Pennsylvania company called Stainless, Inc.,
would be, station manager John Hart said, 650 taller than the Eiffel Tower, and
350 feet taller than the Empire State Building. And it would be one foot taller
than the previous record holder: the WTVM tower, which wasn't in Paris or New
York, but in Columbus, Georgia.

WBIR didn't get to advertise its only global distinction for more than a
couple of months, before another TV stationóin Mississippióbuilt one just a
little taller. (WBIR tried to hold onto the distinction by citing its altitude
advantage, that it was over 3,000 feet above sea level; but by that standard,
any hut in the Himalayas would have been higher still.)

Since those days, a few TV towers have risen over 2,000 feet tall. Today's
tallest, in North Dakota, is about 300 feet taller than our old champ.

You could say it's still in the pack. For what it's worth, no walk-in
skyscraper has ever approached WBIR's 1963 height. Petronas Tower in Malaysia,
the tallest skyscraper in the world today, is almost a football field shorter
than the old WBIR mast. Shanghai's World Financial Center, soon to exceed it, is
241 feet shorter.

In the late '70s, WBIR sold its tower to the folks that ran WIMZ, 103.5, and
moved back to Sharp's Ridge. But the old tower is still there. It's about 15
miles from downtown, right off Rutledge Pike. Reporters used to call this route
"Bloody 11W," fascinating a generation of Knoxville children
("Can we go out Bloody 11W, Dad? Please?"), but it's not very bloody
anymore. In fact, for a divided highway, 11W's pretty quiet. And there, on a
narrow, wooded ridge just past House Mountain, is a TV tower.

I'd say you can't miss it, but if you're not paying attention, you probably
can. We're used to seeing TV towers, and this one doesn't look much different
from any other: a slender cluster of poles, painted red and white. A triangular
platform, about two thirds of the way up, and a multi-pronged antenna on top.
Several big guy wires stretch from the tower far across the countryside to
anchors in several cow pastures and goat farms. My friend Steve Dean, who went
up there once when he was working for WBIR in the '70s, says the view from the
elevator is stunning.

But from the ground, it's just a TV tower, and the fact that it's a little
taller than others you've seen doesn't cause people to jam on their brakes on
Rutledge Pike. You can't get very close to the tower itself, and there's no
historic marker. It wasn't built to look dramatic; it was built to level the
electronic playing field in this geographically challenged region, to get
Captain Kangaroo to kids back in the hollers who'd never seen a TV image before,
and maybe sell them some Nestle's Quik.

I got a few calls about my
column about the 1963 WBIR tower, which was for a few months the tallest
structure in the entire world. The tower is located on Zachary Ridge in East
Knox County near Blaine, but reader Joe Longmire wanted to point out that it's
also within the town boundaries of Corryton, Tennessee, and one of that
community's claims to fame.

I also spoke with engineer Bob Horton, who was there when it was finished,
just before the Kennedy assassination in November, 1963. He told me the tower
didn't have to be the tallest in the world just to get the required altitude to
do its job, but WBIR wanted to build the tallest structure anywhere. So they
graded the ridge down eight feet so the tower could stretch taller and be, by a
foot or so, the tallest thing in the world. It has long since lost that honor,
but Horton thinks it's still the tallest structure in Tennessee.